sunshine
by Anera527
Summary: /But sometimes through the suffering and despair/ my heart cries for shelter to know someone's there/ Then a voices rises within me saying 'hold on, my child/ I'll give you strength, I'll give you hope, just stay a little while'/- Inscription of Hope Three instances where hope helps someone through.


" _ **sunshine"**_

A/N: Hit again by the Muses. I'm still working on 'Heart of Hearts' and 'You and Me' but I was struck by this idea while listening to one of my favorite chorale pieces and I had to write it down. Enjoy!

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" _I am Hope. Keep me in the box. The Miseries will go out among the mortals, but I will remain so that the humans will always have me in spite of all the evils that have gone out among them. I will help them bear their pains…"_

 _-_ Pandora's Box

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Hope is a strange emotion.

It hits Ellie Miller first, as she tries to tire herself into sleep. She works studiously at cleaning up her small flat (when had it become so messy? She barely lived in it!) as the eleven o'clock in the evening coming studiously around. Her meager dishes are hand washed and dried and put away for the morrow, she's dusted the few wooden surfaces not covered by her hastily-packed keepsakes, and she's on her hands and knees mopping the kitchen floor where Fred had previously spilled a cup of his juice. It's hard to raise a toddler alone, a fact that she had never imagined she would have to find out, and she's trembling and trying to keep from having a complete and utter breakdown right here and now on the floor.

Joe hits her right in between the eyes sometimes still. A picture of his bright eyes and wide smile had flashed up at her while she cleaned up her small collection of dog-eared books.

Her movements become uncoordinated, unsteady. Her breath is shuddering, painful in her chest, and she feels like she can't breathe. The walls are closing in on her, the floor is spinning beneath her.

She slips. She places too much weight on her hands, extends her body out too much while reaching along the kitchen floor and ends up sprawling nearly on her face as she scrambles to catch herself. The slap and scrape of the uneven tile stings and rubs her palms raw and she hisses in a breath and a muffled curse which escapes immediately after as a small, frustrated sob.

She can't stop it once it starts. One sob becomes two, two becomes three, three becomes five minutes curled into the puddle of water that she's spilled trying to stifle her tears so she doesn't wake Fred. Her stomach aches and throbs and her throat feels tight as she curses Joe's existence, curses her own stupidity at how she didn't know, _she didn't know_ , and he had killed an innocent boy because of it, and now he's in jail and she's exiled from her hometown and stuck in this shithole flat in Devon, separated even from her eldest son who blames her too.

Danny's death, she feels, is somehow her responsibility. She is the wife of the man who killed her best friend's son. She should have known something was wrong.

Her clothes are damp and her hair clings to her wet face as she finally pulls herself up off the floor. Her hands are slightly bloody from their scrapes but they'll heal. Eventually. She wipes her face and stiphens her tears as best as she can. Enough for the night. Tomorrow, hopefully, she'll be calmer.

She makes her way into the small bedroom where Fred is curled up into a ball in her bed. He's peaceful resting the way he is, his little mouth hanging open in sleep and his flyaway curls (so much like her own) spread on the pillow beneath his head.

There's very little of Joe in him. Only his eyes show anything of his father.

It's then, when looking at her innocent, sleeping son that Ellie is hit by it: a strange, calming feeling that comes from the pit of her stomach that serves to cool her fears and her aching heart.

Here. Here is innocence untouched. Fred is too young yet to be marked by the world. He has not yet made mistakes he has to live with. Here is hope for a better future.

Hope, she thinks, is a foreign emotion for her since her life has collapsed.

But if it's what helps her through her days, she'll take it. She'll see the day when Joe is locked away for his crimes, that Tom comes back to her again and Fred can grow up along Broadchurch's ocean.

She will.

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It's early morning when it hits Alec Hardy.

He wakes up drowning and choking on remembered water in his lungs, trembling and struggling to remind himself of where he is. He grips the sheets of his bed in his fingers and breathes into his pillow, trying to focus on the feel of the soft fabric beneath his skin instead of the memory of Pippa's bloated, decaying face. It almost works. The river still roars in his ears and he catches the scent of its cloying, decay-ridden water as he breathes in.

His heart jumps and his stomach turns at the same time. The fluttering in his chest is a concern still bigger than his stomach but he nonetheless lurches to his feet and stumbles to the bathroom where he dry heaves into the toilet. When he's done he's dangerously light-headed and his heart is still skipping painfully, its beat so fast it feels like it's not working at all. He works through the panic of the now-familiar sensation and struggles to breathe normally, knowing that he has to settle his heartbeat before he can even think about moving now.

He's bowed over the toilet bowl, face buried in the crook of his arm, for a very long time.

When he finally manages to climb to his feet it's not to go back to bed. Sleep is out of the question now for the rest of the day. He makes his way into the kitchen of the small ocean-side shack he's rented and grabs a glass of water to swallow his pills. He needs to make a doctor's appointment in the morning to get some more, he'll have to remember to do that.

He releases the breath in his lungs in a sigh as he braces himself against the back of one of the kitchen chairs, standing with bowed head and closed eyes.

He hasn't had many dreams of Pippa for awhile. Danny Latimer's case had taken up more of his time and thoughts than Sandbrook had, though Pippa and Lisa are never very far away. It's only recently now, since Joe Miller has been arrested, that the nightmares have started again. He knows why.

He may have arrested Danny's killer. He may have found closure for the Latimer family.

There is no closure for him.

Sandbrook is the albatross around his neck. It's what tore his family apart, it's what still very nearly kills him when his heart acts up. It's what he judges everything else around. He feels he has let the Latimers down in some way, just as he has let Ricky and Cate Gillipsie and Tess and his daughter down by not solving Sandbrook and missing the fact that his family was no longer a 'family' long before Tess lost the pendant.

He'd been the only one who had been able to wrap up the Latimer case. He'd had to tell Miller her husband was a killer, he had had to break her. He had been the one to watch the Latimers' faces crack in shock and dawning anger when he told them who it was who had killed Danny. They were moments he felt guilt over, even though he was blameless in them.

Not so with Pippa, though. Which is why she's come back to haunt him.

His heart is finally steady again. He swallows the rest of the water to rid his mouth of the acrid taste of his dry heaving from before and reaches across the table to where his wallet is resting. Opening it he looks down at the worn picture of Pippa's smiling face.

Just a child. Innocent. Guileless. Blameless.

Like Danny had been. Joe had admitted it himself: Danny had gone along with Joe's wishes until that fateful night, and then he had wanted out. He hadn't wanted to play with a grown man's twisted fantasies.

They would be children forever now.

He thinks of Daisy, now, as thoughts of Pipps usually lead, and although being self-exiled from his daughter is as painful a thought as it always is he still hopes for reconciliation someday.

This morning he's hit by it: a small ember of hope. Not a flame, not even a flicker, and it's still fed by his jaded cynicism, but it's there. He'll solve the Sandbrook case. He'll find Pippa's and Lisa's killer. He'll be able to get his daughter back.

He will.

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It hits Beth in the afternoon, as she stands on the beach in Broadchurch watching the waves crash onto the sand. Mark stands beside her holding Lizzie in his arms, tall and strong and there, and she smiles up at him with an expression tinged with sadness. Chloe's kneeling beside the bouquet of flowers they've set there in memory of Danny and Beth lays a hand on her oldest daughter's shoulder.

Joe's acquitted. He's walked free now from the murder of her boy and the town has exiled him, but it's still not the end Beth wanted.

She'll take what she can.

The bastard's taken enough as it is already.

She's tired of rage and anger and tears and sadness. She's tired of staying up late at night wondering about 'what-if'. It's as she told Mark: 'What we do now, that's who we are.'

She's going to live for Danny. She'll bring Lizzie up and teach her about life she wasn't able to do with her son. She'll protect her daughter's innocence as long as she can and let her daughter be as regular a child as she can. She'll work with Mark to strengthen their family again, and although sometimes she'll bend over double remembering Danny's smile or laugh she won't let it beat her.

It hits her as she watches the Millers come walking across the sand towards them. Fred giggles and screeches his delight for all the world to hear. Tom's grinning, happier than any of them have seen him in a long while, and Ellie's positively radiant as she greets them with the promise of crisps.

It will never be the same again, Beth knows. Nothing can be. But they have hope now, under this sun-streaked sky, of a future that will grow better every day.

Beth decides she'll take this hope, and this sunshine too.

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 _may there someday be sunshine_

 _may there someday be happiness_

 _may there someday be love_

 _may there someday be peace_

"Inscription of Hope"


End file.
